The 12 Reasons to Hate Diesel Cars

With only a few exceptions, diesel automobiles have never really caught on in the United States. If you ignore the years of the OPEC oil embargo during the late 1970s, there’s never really been a time when diesel engines have come anywhere close to matching the popularity of gasoline engines.

Diesel enthusiasts claim that today’s diesel engines are greatly improved over the ones we learned to know and hate in the 1970s, and that they could provide a smarter alternative to gasoline engines. Read on to learn just a few of the reasons we’re hoping that never happens.

12. There is a limited availability of diesel automobiles in the United States

The fact that diesels are relatively unpopular in the United States has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The fact that the majority of the cars on the road today in the United States use gasoline engines means that you’re going to have to be able to pick and choose if you want to buy a diesel automobile. While it is true that many car manufacturers today produce matching diesel models of all the gasoline models they produce, this isn’t true of all models, and the overall numbers available are still likely to be small, even if you can find a model you like that has a diesel version.

The comparative scarcity of diesel automobiles is also a problem for people who are in the market for a good used automobile. Buying a good used car is all about finding that perfect mix of reliability and value, and the low numbers of new diesels available in recent years translates into less good used diesels available now.